This Vail Symposium poster hangs in our office and we at the Antlers try to live by those words. They help guide many of our decisions, including our efforts to be good corporate citizens. We are quite proud of our record in that regard, and frankly it just got a little better. A couple months ago, Bob Bandoni introduced us to Students Shoulder to Shoulder. Their tagline is “The International School of Global Citizenship”. Rather than try to explain what that entails, we just urge you to investigate their website. It’s meaningful.

Although the program is five or six years old, Bob explained that they were planning their first Global Solutions Forum here in Vail, in October. The idea was to bring representatives together from the various NGO’s around the world and the schools who now participate with Shoulder to Shoulder. The real purpose is simply to further their success and advance the mission. It took all of about two minutes to recognize the value and importance of this effort. In the context of our day to day preoccupation with our own lives and businesses, the opportunity to play some small part in something so meaningful was irresistible.

Last week, the Antlers was honored to host ten representatives from a number of the different schools that are now part of the Shoulder to Shoulder “alliance”. Like some of the other worthy causes that the Antlers has adopted over the years, this was all done at no charge to the participants or their schools. By helping making it affordable for them to participate in this conference, we like to think that the Antlers is playing a small part in the fulfillment of their mission.

Like all great ideas, Bob Bandoni and the others behind this effort see it as something much bigger. It’s not just personal growth for the students, but rather a significant step on the path to making this a better world. That’s a lofty goal, but one which the Antlers is really proud to be associated with.